In the end of summer, many homeowners go about the arduous task of fixing the house before the rainy winter season stars. This particular project was to fix the chimney that the kitchen contractor had run into a while back. Some masonry work was needed, but the poor chimney flue took the brunt of the damage being ripped mostly out of the brick archors. The chimney flue door was covered in years of paint, dust, chimney ash and stucco. What better time to clean off the rust and layers of history, then the present. Out comes the trusty and useful little dremel tool and the grinding starts. Quite a bit more stucco and old cement than initially observed during preliminary inspection, so the grinding was a bit more work. Finally the pieces were clean and a curious name appears.

It was expected that the lower raised lettering would say ‘Oakland’ as that is where the house is, but the upper letters were assumed to be ‘Sanitation’ or some other form of building deptartment nomenclature. Apparently not. The words ‘Perry C. Fry’ stood proudly upon the now clean flue door. Who?

Unfortunately a couple simple web searches yielded no answers as to whom the mysterious name belongs to. Considering that the house is some 70 years old, the reference is an old one. Hopefully this will peak someone’s interest enough to help answer this question. Not that the question itself is important, but it’s just one of those historical curiosities. But for now it will remain a mystery of Oakland.